2010 – 2014 Contract Signed

The new contract for tenured and tenure track Faculty represented by the SIUC Faculty Association has been signed and executed. The final edited version is available on the FA Contract page at this site: FA Contract

Strike continues on Tuesday

The strike by tenured and tenure-track faculty continues today, Tuesday. Picketing resumes this morning. Bargaining also resumes this morning.

At 5:17 pm on Monday November 7, the SIUC administration’s bargaining team presented the Faculty Association’s negotiating team with a revised proposal on all remaining items at dispute. The administration’s team then informed the FA team that they were departing for the evening and wished to resume negotiations Tuesday morning. The premature departure of the administration team  ensures that the strike by faculty on the SIUC campus will continue at least one more day.

A statement concerning the status of bargaining appears in the previous post.

Where we stand: November 7, 2011

Thanks to the resolve and hard work of faculty at the picket line and in the bargaining room, and with the help of numerous supporters from our sister locals and hundreds of SIUC undergraduates, we have made considerable progress over the last few days, but major differences remain between our proposals and those of the Board of Trustees team. The administration left us no alternative to a strike in order to achieve the progress we have made so far.  With continued resolve and support we shall secure enough progress to reach a tentative agreement and end this strike.

At 5:17 pm on Monday, November 7, the BOT team presented a set of proposals that responded to FA proposals that had been sent to the BOT team at 11:30 am.  After a brief conversation, the board team informed the FA bargaining team that they were leaving for the evening and would resume negotiations at 9:30 am on Tuesday. The FA team will resume bargaining with the Board team then.  The FA team had been prepared to continue bargaining in an effort to reach an agreement Monday night.  But by breaking off negotiations on Monday night, the board team ensured that a strike would continue for at least one more day.  In subsequent comments in an email and to the press the Chancellor indicated that her team was ready to meet again this evening, but that statement contradicts what the Board bargaining team said in direct communication with the FA bargaining team.

At 8:00 pm the FA’s Departmental Representatives Council received a detailed report from the bargaining team on the course of negotiations and the current positions of the board and FA.  At the end of that meeting the DRC voted unanimously to support their bargaining team, calling for them to return to the bargaining table and seek an equitable resolution of the remaining issues that divide the two sides.  The major items where the BOT and FA remain divided are the following:

Furloughs. The BOT proposal lacks clear standards and a clear process for determining when the financial situation justifies furloughs, and provides for no accountability that would allow a grievance or other appeal in the event the FA believes those standards have not been met.  The BOT proposal offers toothless midterm bargaining which could not reverse an unjustified imposition of furloughs. The BOT proposal would thus undermine our collective bargaining rights by failing to guarantee that salaries are determined by mutual agreement and cannot be arbitrarily and unilaterally reduced by the Board.  Because the BOT proposal lacks transparency and accountability, it provides no safeguard against the risk that savings from furloughs would be used not to safeguard our academic mission, but instead to fund other administrative priorities.  Finally, the Board’s proposal would limit our recourse to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board to settle our dispute over the legality of the BOT’s imposition of four furlough days in FY 2011. The FA has proposed multiple options for meeting our interest in transparency and accountability on this issue.

Back to work agreement. The Board’s punitive back to work proposal is an insult to the faculty exercising their legal right to strike under Illinois law. Particularly insulting are the Board’s broad implications that faculty have been engaging in threats and misconduct during the course of the strike.  Inflammatory language will only inflame tensions on campus. The FA believes that an important goal for a back to work agreement is to build a better relationship between the faculty and the administration.

Fair share.  The administration continues to refuse to offer us fair share provisions similar to those offered to other IEA locals.

Areas of agreement. The FA team has worked creatively to secure our basic interest in transparency and accountability on Reduction in Force (layoffs) by contractualizing a definition of financial exigency and gaining the power to strike in the event we wish to challenge a BOT declaration of financial exigency, though we would have preferred the less disruptive alternatives of a binding outside panel or binding arbitration.  On overload pay, we secured full pay for all face to face overload courses, but would allow the BOT to offer 0.5-1.0 month’s for distance learning courses, in order to meet their interest in ensuring that such courses are profitable.  This last provision is explicitly limited to the current contract, and a cost study analysis done by the provost’s office will help determine whether the university can afford full pay for DL courses moving forward.  We have also reached an agreement to put off final decisions on sexual harassment and conflict of interest procedures, but with a schedule to resolve these matters.

Bargaining Continues

It is Monday morning at 6:50 a.m. and bargaining continues at the Student Center with no settlement in sight. The FA Team has committed to staying at the Student Center until a settlement is reached. Picketers with assigned locations should go to those locations. Others can join at any picket location at the perimeter of the campus.

In solidarity,

Randy Hughes

Bargaining to resume under the auspices of a federal mediator

Friday evening, November 4, SIUC Associate General Counsel Deborah Nelson, a representative of the Board Bargaining Team, sent a message to Faculty Association lead negotiator Morteza Daneshdoost indicating the Board Team’s willingness to resume bargaining under the auspices of a federal mediator. Morteza replied the same evening, agreeing to resume bargaining. The exact time of bargaining sessions depends on the availability of a mediator, but it is our hope that bargaining sessions can resume by Sunday.

Our collective action, along with the support of students, community members, and employees across campus, has brought us to this point. Despite the attempts of the administration to minimize our results and to suppress contradictory views, it is apparent that it has not been business as usual on campus.

It is our hope that bargaining will proceed quickly with a real give and take that will close the gap between the two sides and result in a mutual agreement. As far as we have come, we have farther to go to reach our goal of a fair settlement. That means we will keep building pressure – sustaining our strike, growing participation in picketing and other activity, and reaching out to supporters – until a tentative agreement is reached at the bargaining table.

The Faculty Association is holding an informational meeting for faculty at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, November 6, at the Carbondale Civic Center. This meeting is open to all members of the bargaining unit represented by the Faculty Association.

Faculty Association Strike Day 2 Begins

The Faculty Association’s first day on strike has passed. Aside from the cold and rainy weather, it was a good first day for the picketing teams. Faculty Association picketers maintained a strong presence all day at the numerous entrances to campus. Picketers were joined by many students and members of other locals in a upbeat and spirited display of solidarity. Passersby were overwhelmingly supportive.

Many thanks to all of the individuals who were picketing on the line, running supplies to picketers and providing support at the Strike Headquarters, as well as all of those who supported the strike by not going to work. If you haven’t experienced the camaraderie of working on one of these teams, you have another chance today (Friday). Join a team at any of the picketing sites around the perimeter of campus, or show up at Strike Headquarters (west end of the old Carbondale High School, 880 West High Street just off of Oakland Avenue, one block north of Main Street).

Our goal is to negotiate a mutual agreement between the SIUC Faculty Association and the SIU Board of Trustees. Your FA Bargaining Team has been in bargaining for many months. They continued to work through the day Wednesday, up to the strike deadline, meeting with the Board Team, formulating options, and offering significant movement to meet administration interests, only to have these offers summarily rejected by the Board Team without any movement or counterproposal on the Board’s part. In striking against the SIUC Administration, we are exercising our remaining legal alternative to get the Board Team back to the bargaining table with the will and authority to reach a mutual agreement with the Faculty Association.

In solidarity,

Randy Hughes

hrhughes57@frontier.com

SIUC Faculty Association On Strike

Statement to the media by FA Spokesperson David Johnson
12:01 a.m., November 3, 2011

Tonight the SIUC administration decided it wanted a strike, not a settlement. As of midnight tonight, the Faculty Association is on strike.

Today the FA team brought yet another new set of proposals to the bargaining table to help us reach an agreement and avoid a strike. The board team has now rejected all of our proposals, and offered no new proposals of their own. They have today and tonight, as so often before, shown no interest in real bargaining. They have been willing to meet but unwilling to move. SIUC has never before had a strike on campus. Tomorrow morning, because of this administration’s unwillingness to bargain, we will be on strike.

Let me briefly explain the new proposals we brought to the table today, which will help you understand the major issues still separating the two sides.

Our bargaining team brought two new options on furloughs. Both involved major concessions on our part. We offered to allow the administration to impose furloughs at its own discretion, without any need to justify these furloughs–so long as it repaid the furloughs the next year. And we offered furloughs the administration would not need to repay, but would need to justify, including, if we found their justification inadequate, to an outside arbitrator. Given a choice between concession A and concession B, the administration chose none of the above. It rejected both.

Our bargaining team brought a new proposal to the table that would allow us to deal with our differences over a new conflict of interest policy and SIUC procedures to follow in dealing with accusations of sexual harassment. We suggested that these matters, important though they are, should be postponed until midterm bargaining, so that they would not stand in the way of a new contract that would avoid a strike. The administration rejected this proposal.

Salaries. The Chancellor’s team offered us raises of 0,1,1, and 2% over the four years of the next contract. But she said that offering us such raises would require large increases in tuition for our students. We do not want to raise tuition on our students. We have therefore turned down their salary offer, and instead continued to offer, as we have for a long time now, that our salaries should increase if and only if SIUC’s overall revenues increase. If SIUC’s finances improve, our salaries should increase. If not, not.

I hope this makes it clear that our disagreement is not about salaries. So what is our disagreement about? The fundamental issues are transparency and accountability. Just as we hold our students and ourselves accountable by giving them a syllabus outlining the criteria by which we will judge them, so too we expect the administration to provide us with transparency and accountability.

Transparency and accountability are particularly crucial regarding tenure. The FA represents all tenured and tenure-track faculty at SIUC. Tenure is essential to protecting academic freedom and attracting and retaining high quality faculty at SIUC. It has come under attack here before. As long time residents of Carbondale will remember, SIUC laid off 104 tenured and tenure-track faculty in 1974. That move was illegal, and was eventually quashed in the courts–but only after SIUC suffered tremendous damage. This administration would have the Faculty Association sign off on contract language that would make such layoffs legal. This is something we cannot do.

We are willing to help SIUC out in the event of a genuine financial crisis. We are not against furloughs in all circumstances or against layoffs in all circumstances. We are prepared to support both furloughs and layoffs, but only if they are justified by a true fiscal crisis. The only way to ensure this is through a process that provides transparency and accountability, a process that all on the SIUC campus can understand and accept. The administration has been unwilling to work with us to produce such a process.

As of midnight tonight, the Faculty Association is on strike. Tomorrow morning thousands of SIUC students will be left without qualified professors in their classrooms. This is not an easy step for faculty to take. Tomorrow morning, the place we want to be in the classroom. Instead we will be on the picket line. We will be there seeking what we have been seeking for 16 long months now–a fair contract that is in the best interest not only of SIUC faculty but in the best interest of the university as a whole and, most importantly, the students we serve.